I’m really struggling with this reading. The rebels aren’t space communists trying to save their homeland from the encroaching Empire, they’re fighting to restore the republic that was the precursor to Palpatine’s totalitarian regime.
My reading is that it’s not meant as a direct allegory to Vietnam but rather trying to stick Vietnam into a blender with stuff Americans like in order to link the Vietnamese struggle to other things. The rebels also draw some inspiration from the Revolutionary War, and obviously The Empire draws inspiration from Nazi Germany.
The way I believe Lucas saw it was that Americans ought to be inclined to support the Vietnamese (because of the Revolutionary War, WWII, and general “anti-authortarian” sentiment), but the specifics of the conflict were so loaded with propaganda, racism, and blind loyalty that people could not look at it objectively. So, the controversial communist aspect was cut out, the racial lens was removed by making the rebels white, and distance was created between The Empire and the US by giving them British accents, which let people evaluate the in-universe conflict in the abstract. Sort of a “Platonic form” of the Vietnam War, if you will.
If it was intended to change minds though, it’s unclear how effective it actually was. The problem is that when people evaluate conflicts in the real world, the racial lens comes back, they get immersed in propaganda about the specific group and their actions and ideology, and there’s a sense of patriotism and “rallying around the flag,” all of which generally outweigh the aspect idea of sympathizing with “The Rebellion.”
My reading is that it’s not meant as a direct allegory to Vietnam but rather trying to stick Vietnam into a blender with stuff Americans like in order to link the Vietnamese struggle to other things. The rebels also draw some inspiration from the Revolutionary War, and obviously The Empire draws inspiration from Nazi Germany.
The way I believe Lucas saw it was that Americans ought to be inclined to support the Vietnamese (because of the Revolutionary War, WWII, and general “anti-authortarian” sentiment), but the specifics of the conflict were so loaded with propaganda, racism, and blind loyalty that people could not look at it objectively. So, the controversial communist aspect was cut out, the racial lens was removed by making the rebels white, and distance was created between The Empire and the US by giving them British accents, which let people evaluate the in-universe conflict in the abstract. Sort of a “Platonic form” of the Vietnam War, if you will.
If it was intended to change minds though, it’s unclear how effective it actually was. The problem is that when people evaluate conflicts in the real world, the racial lens comes back, they get immersed in propaganda about the specific group and their actions and ideology, and there’s a sense of patriotism and “rallying around the flag,” all of which generally outweigh the aspect idea of sympathizing with “The Rebellion.”